Tal R08: Carlsen beats Ponomariov, moves to sole fourth

11/13/2009 – Feeling better? At last the top seed Magnus Carlsen, 18, has scored a win in this tournament. It came in the form of an explosive English Attack in the Scheveningen, which floored the former FIDE world champion Ruslan Ponomariov in 31 moves (actually with a mate in three). With plus one Carlsen now occupies fourth place alone, behind Kramnik, Anand and Ivanchuk. Full report with annotations.

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Tal Memorial 2009

The Tal Memorial, which is taking place from November 4th to 19th, is the strongest
tournament of the year, and at category 21 (average Elo 2764) one of the strongest
of all time. It is a ten-player round robin with classical time controls –
40 moves in two hours, then 20 moves in one hour and then 15 minutes for the
rest of the game with 30 seconds increment per move in this phase. The first
four games take place in the National Hotel (Mokhovaya Street D15), the last
five in the mall GUM (Red Square 3). The games start at 15:00h local Moscow
time, which is 13:00h EST (Berlin, Paris), 12:00h London, 7:00 a.m. New York,
5:30 p.m. New Delhi, 11:00 p.m. Sydney. You can find the exact starting time
at your location here.
The World Blitz Championship (see below) will be staged after the main event,
from November 16-18 2009 in GUM.

Aronian-Ivanchuk
In the Open Catalan employed by these two familiar faces, yesterday's victimizer
seemed ready to play the role of prey. To Black's fifteenth move, the game was
a transposition of Lalic-Piza Cortizo from the Valencia Open of 1990. Ultimately,
White took the full point in that game, and, given its dynamic nature, one can
hardly be surprised that the players today were equally enchanted by the opportunity
to explore the possibilities the position offered. The game was rather even
throughout; however, Aronian found himself a pawn to the good after the series
of exchanges ending with 37.Kxb3. Faced with a pawn down rook ending, Ivanchuk
may have taken a slight misstep with 42...Rh4. The resulting ending seemed favourable
to White, but Black played solidly and the Armenian was left with no more than
a draw after 58 moves. Despite this close shave, Ivanchuk maintains his position
in Kramnik's exclusive chasing pack, with hopes of catching the leader tomorrow.

Gelfand-Anand
In the second Open Catalan of the day, Gelfand and Anand played a transposition
of Tkachiev-Pelletier (2007), in which the current French champion coughed up
a few pawns and lost in the endgame grind that followed. 14...Nab4 represented
a deviation, however, and the players fairly calmly navigated their way through
to a position that, objectively, may have been slightly better for White. Though,
after his loss yesterday, Gelfand was not going to take unnecessary chances
against the world champion. Holding the black pieces, Anand was quite happy
to split the point, which the players agreed to do on move 28.

Gelfand,B (2758) - Anand,V (2788) [E05]
Tal Memorial Moscow RUS (8), 13.11.20091.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.g3 Be7 5.Bg2 0-0 6.0-0 dxc4 7.Qc2 a6 8.a4. This
move is considered somewhat unambitious compared to the immediate recapture
of the c4-pawn, though Alexey Shirov recently won with the white pieces in this
line. 8...Bd7 9.Qxc4 Bc6 10.Bf4 a5 11.Nc3 Na6 12.Ne5 Bxg2 13.Kxg2 Nd5 14.Rad1
Nab4. Played after fifteen minutes of thought by the World Champion. The
previously mentioned Shirov game continued with the immediate removal of white's
bishop 15...Nxf4+ and only two moves later did black occupy the b4-square with
his remaining knight. In that game however, White was able to make use of the
open g-file and e5-outpost and won convincingly in Shirov-Landa, Budesliga 2009.
15.Bc1. Now that White's queen's rook has been activated behind the potentially
open d-file, retreating the bishop to c1 will not impede his development. 15...Nb6
16.Qb3 N4d5 17.Nb5 c6 18.Na3 Nb4 19.e4 Nd7 20.Nxd7 Qxd7 21.Nc4 Qd8 22.Be3. Optically
speaking, White has a slight advantage based on more space, and slightly better
minor pieces. However, after the pawn break on Black's next move, play quickly
levels off. 22...b5! 23.Ne5 Qc7 24.Nd3 Qb7 25.Nxb4 Bxb4 26.f3 bxa4 27.Qxa4
Qb5 28.Qc2 draw. [Click
to replay]

Kramnik-Leko
Today's encounter between the tournament leader and his opponent, who was already
eliminated from contention, was hardly worth writing home about. The game was
a transposition of a handful of games - Jussupow-Sax (1989) amongst them - right
up until move 27! Choosing a deep line that yielded four draws in as many games
certainly led to expected results, as the players split the point on the 36th
move. In fact, where 27.Rxd8 was chosen in the past, leading to rapid conclusions,
Kramnik opted to extend the length of the game a bit by playing the cheeky 27.Rxh7+.
Spectators should not despair, however, as Kramnik's opponent tomorrow - Ivanchuk
- cannot be expected to be as submissive.

Morozevich-Svidler
These unfortunate souls must be on the verge of despondency, having been lost
to obscurity at the bottom of the crosstable for some time now. Up to Black's
fifteenth move, the game followed the Taimanov Sicilian employed in Khamatgaleev-Jansa
(1997), where Black scored a quick 31-move victory. Today's play was much more
solid, with little in the way of fireworks, leaving the draw reached on move
49 a small surprise. Neither player seems poised to break his winless streak,
though only tomorrow's results will confirm this suspicion.

Carlsen-Ponomariov
After today's result, the sole 2800 in this event has finally brought his rating
performance on par with his actual rating. Battling back from an inconvenient
illness, he made a resounding statement to the chess world at large with his
crush today - watch out! The game started out as a fairly innocuous Sicilian
Schevenigen, with Carlsen making a bold contribution to theory with 11.Qe1,
unexpectedly ignoring tried and tested continuations. In a move reminiscent
of his 15...b5 against Kramnik - which, granted, was not as immediately damaging
- Ponomariov saw his hopes dissolve with 17...d5. Basing his play on mating
themes thereafter, Magnus readily found his way to a position where surrender
was the Ukrainian's only sound response.

15...Qb6. It would be too soon for Black's bishop to leave the c8-h3
diagonal. On 15...Bb7, White might already consider the thematic sacrifice 16.Ndxe6!
with a strong attack. It should also be mentioned that 15...e5 would not win
a piece, due to 16.Nd5 Nxd5 17.exd5 and Black cannot meet the positional threats
of Nd4-c6 and f3-f4. After 15... Qb6, the threat of e6-e5 is real, as can be
seen on the note to White's next move.

Carlsen analyses the position in the press room after the game

16.Bc4. Intending to meet 16...e5 with the powerful 17.Bxf7+! The point
behind Ponomariov's last move would have been illustrated after, for example:
16.Kb1?! e5! 17.Nd5 Nxd5 18.exd5 Be7 19.Nf5 Qxe3 20.Nxe3 Bd8! when Black has
a good position. 16...Qc5? This move is certainly a mistake, since it
adds strength to a future sacrifice on e6. If a white knight lands on that square,
it will do so with the gain of tempo due to the position of the black queen.
17.Qb3! White has a clear advantage since an upcoming sacrifice on e6
is now unavoidable. 17...d5. It could be that Black's best is 17...Ra7
when the rook provides at least some protection along the second rank, though
the sacrifice of any of white's minor pieces would have been very strong. 18.exd5
Bd6

19.Nfxe6 fxe6 20.dxe6 Be7 21.Qd3 0-0

22.Bb3? This move came as quite a shock to the computer-armed spectators
who were kibitzing on Playchess.com. Either 22.g5! or 22.Qg6! would have been
winning for White. 22...Rd8?? After 22...Bb7! Ponomariov could have kept
himself in the game, though White would still enjoy the better chances. 23.g5
Nh7 24.gxh6 Qh5 25.Qe4 Qxh6+ 26.Kb1 Ra7 27.Nf5 Rxd1+ 28.Rxd1 Qf6 29.Rd7 Bxd7
30.exd7+ Kf8 31.Qd5

Links

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See also

12/30/2017 – The "King Salman World Blitz & Rapid Championships 2017" in Riyadh from Decemer 26th to 30th. At the half way point of the Blitz Championship, the defending champ Sergey Karjakin leads with 9 / 11. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is a half point back followed by Peter Svidler and a trio of Chinese: Wang, Ding and Yu on 8 / 11. In the Women's Pia Cramling has a full point lead with 9½ / 11. Watch live with Rounds 11 to 22 from 12:00 Noon CET (6:00 AM EST) on Saturday with commentary by E. Miroshnichenko & WGM K. Tsatsalashvili.

See also

12/6/2017 – Imagine this: you tell a computer system how the pieces move — nothing more. Then you tell it to learn to play the game. And a day later — yes, just 24 hours — it has figured it out to the level that beats the strongest programs in the world convincingly! DeepMind, the company that recently created the strongest Go program in the world, turned its attention to chess, and came up with this spectacular result.

Video

On this 60 mins video we are going to concentrate on a simple, very solid idea in the main line Scandinavian, which even Magnus Carlsen has used to win games. Black focusses on making his life easy in the opening and forces White to work very hard to get advantage – but it is doubtful if White can get an advantage. Club players are always on the lookout for effective, time-saving solutions and here we have just that. Accompany FIDE Senior Trainer and IM Andrew Martin on this 60 mins video. You can learn a new opening system in 60 mins and start to play it with confidence on the very same day!